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Would YOU Trust A Robot With Your Pizza?
By
Scott Heins
Published Jun 26, 2016
Modified Jun 26, 2016
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By
Scott Heins
Published Jun 26, 2016
Modified Jun 26, 2016
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Given that the Silicon Valley tech industry's ultimate goal is the mechanized on-demand destruction of our souls, it makes sense that a new start-up is pitching the idea of robot-made pizza. Staffed by a team of giant robots that have been given cute fleshbag names like Marta & Bruno, Zume Pizza claims to have found a cost-saving way to prep, bake, and deliver pizzas with almost zero human labor.
Zume is the passion project/sinister plan of Alex Garden, who recently gave Bloomberg an inside look at his pizza manufacturing plant. We're offered a disruptive, Fordist vision of cooking, in which a robotic nub slathers sauce ("perfectly but not too perfectly") atop a moving crust on its way to the oven. The pies are then pre-baked in an 850 degree oven. Once an order is placed, a van retrofitted with ovens finishes the pizza en route to its destination. Machines are used to eject the pizza from the oven and slice it, because at that point you might as well. "It would be like Domino's without the labor component," Garden says in the video. "You can start to see how incredibly profitable that can be."
In the past six months we've learned that pizza boxes can cause cancer, watched as GOP dad rocker John Kasich attacked a Gino's slice with a fork, and gasped in shock at "pizzaception." But this—this pizza abomination that goes against the very humanity of the cheesy delicacy—is beyond the pale. We cannot stand by and watch pizza culture grind to halt in a technocratic cul-de-sac—all we can do is go out and invest our stomachs and wallets in the best handcrafted pizza places NYC has to offer.
[h/t Bloomberg]
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Robo-pizza
Zume Pizza
Scott Heins
Scott Heins is a freelance photo and video journalist based in New York City, and a frequent contributor to Gothamist + WNYC. His work often centers around labor rights, housing, and policing. In 2018-2019 he traveled to four states while covering a wave of public school teachers strikes, with work featured in The New York Times, The Intercept, Getty Images, Splinter, and Bloomberg Photos. Scott is a dues-paying member of the National Writers Union's Freelance Solidarity Project.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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